United States or Montenegro ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The figure 19 means 19 fathoms or nothing!" The toise, or fathom, measured 1.949 metres. Having made the calculation, he ran out the twine, made a knot and felt about on the piece of wall for the exact and necessarily one point at which the knot, formed at 37 metres from the window of the Demoiselles, should touch the Frefosse wall. In a few moments, the point of contact was established.

Exact experiments, made by LEFEVRE-GINEAU, with instruments constructed by FORTIN, shewed the weight of the cubic decimetre of distilled water, at the point of the greatest condensation to be 18827.15 grains of the pile of 50 marcs, which is preserved here in the Hotel de la Monnaie, and is called Le poids de Charlemagne; the toise being supposed at 13 degrees of the thermometer of 80 degrees.

Does it belong to the trap-formation of Parapara? It becomes thicker, and mixed with sand, as we approach the Rio Apure; for near Calabozo it is one toise thick, near the mission of Guayaval five toises, which may lead to the belief that the strata of red sandstone dips towards the south. We gathered in the Mesa de Pavones little nodules of blue iron-ore disseminated in the clay.

At that time, according to the comparisons made between this new toise and the Toise du Nord, which had also been used for the measurement of an arc of the meridian, an error of the tenth part of a millimetre in measuring lengths of the order of a metre was considered quite unimportant.

Sheep had fallen heavily in value; our flock could not be realized without incurring a ruinous loss, so it was kept for a time on the town commonage. Eventually, it was handed over to a native chief named Toise, who lived on the other side of the Buffalo River, about five miles away. I was put to the grammar school, where I studied for something more than half a year.

As the degrees progressively diminished towards the south, but much more towards the middle than towards the extremities, the middle of the whole arc was taken; and, on comparing it with the degrees measured at Peru, between the years 1737 and 1741, the ellipticity of the earth was concluded to be 1/334 the mean degree, 57008 toises; and the METRE, which is the ten-millionth part of the quarter of the meridian, 443.296 lines of the old French toise which had been used at Peru.

He was a tall, dignified, and remarkably handsome man; his hospitality and courtesy could not be surpassed. I believe that subsequently Toise became ruined, morally and physically, through the drink habit. He was only another of the countless victims of "Cape Smoke." In the days I write of, the climate of the Eastern Province was totally different from what it is today.

Arrival at Cape Town Port Elizabeth First encounter with big game Grahamstown Severe thunderstorm King William's Town Natives and their ponies Social peculiarities Farming The annual trek Camp-life Surf-bathing Self-sacrificing attitude of Larry O'Toole Capture of an ant-bear The coast scenery A moral shock School Chief Toise Rainy seasons Flooded rivers

We know that in France the fundamental standard for measures of length was for a long time the Toise du Châtelet, a kind of callipers formed of a bar of iron which in 1668 was embedded in the outside wall of the Châtelet, at the foot of the staircase. This bar had at its extremities two projections with square faces, and all the toises of commerce had to fit exactly between them.

The Toise du Châtelet, notwithstanding its evident faults, was employed for nearly a hundred years; in 1766 it was replaced by the Toise du Pérou, so called because it had served for the measurements of the terrestrial arc effected in Peru from 1735 to 1739 by Bouguer, La Condamine, and Godin.